This article first appeared in Law Technology News September 2005.

The new ABA Legal Technology Survey has been released and is available for order. Each year, the Legal Technology Resource Center surveys lawyers in private practice to analyze the use of technology in law offices.

This year, more than 1,500 member lawyers responded to the surveys, and we again produced five volumes: Law Office Technology, Litigation and Courtroom Technology, Web and Communication Technology, Online Research and Mobile Lawyers.

Among the highlights:

Respondents: The average respondent is 51 years old and male. Fifty-seven percent work in solo practices or small firms (2-9 attorneys). Primary practice areas include litigation, estates, wills and trusts, and real estate.

Disconnect: There is a disconnect between availability and use of legal-specific software:

• 41 percent say they have case management software available, but only 18 percent personally use it.
• Time-and-billing software was available at 82 percent of firms, but used by only 42 percent.
• One half of firms had document assembly software available, but only 30 percent of respondents use it.
• 32 percent had document management software available to them, but only one-fifth use that software.

E-Filing: Electronic filing has gained prevalence. In the 2002 survey, 81 percent of participants said they had never filed court documents electronically; that figure is down to 54 percent. While there is much hype about electronic discovery, most respondents (73 percent) have never received an EDD request and three-quarters had never made an EDD request.

Websites: All firms with 50 or more attorneys have websites; the overall response was 68 percent. Most attorneys rely on a confidentiality statement accompanying transmission of confidential or privileged communications or documents to clients; only 13 percent use any type of encryption as a security precaution.

CLE: Forty-two percent of respondents have taken online CLE; generally preferring to take them from their own offices (55 percent) rather than other venues.

Connectivity: Not surprsingly, use of dial-up use is spiraling down, from 20 percent of respondents in 2002 to 6 percent now. Only 15 percent of solo practitioners are still using dial-up, prefering DSL (44 percent) or cable modems (26 percent).

The survey volumes are available as a set or individually. New this year are Trend Reports for each volume providing focused analysis at the beginning of each volume and also available via download. Also available via download is the 2004-2005 Executive Summary, which provides an at-a-glance look at the five-volume survey set. For more details on the survey reports and to purchase/download online, see: www.lawtechnology.org/survstat/.

Laura Ikens is Senior Research Specialist at the American Bar Association's Legal Technology Research Center. E-mail: IkensL@staff.abanet.org.